Hello, and welcome to the Olympics! As many of you already know, I have decided not to participate this year. It was a difficult decision, but in the end my complete lack of talent won the day. Just once in my life I’d like to pit myself against any Olympic athlete in any sport –…
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Leadership is an art. And, as with any art form, some people are better at it than others. In painting, for example, some people create breathtaking masterpieces, scenes of sweeping beauty and poignant emotion capable of evoking rapture in the viewer. Others paint reasonably well, good enough to admire but not quite deserving of the…
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Wow! Today is an awesome day to have no idea what I was going to write until 10 minutes ago. When I woke up this morning I had absolutely no useful thoughts. I couldn’t even decide what I wanted to eat for breakfast; I merely stared at my various boxes of cereal, trying to remember…
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Hi everyone! We’re almost the halfway point of summer! By now, parents across this country are running out of activities (or money) to keep their kids engaged and are counting down the minutes until school resumes and their lives can return to normal. For some lucky parents, their kids have snagged an internship. Or maybe…
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Hello, and welcome to summer! More than that, welcome to a short workweek! There’s a good chance that you think today is Tuesday, and if that’s the case then it’s quite possible you’re still drunk from the weekend. Your clothes might smell vaguely of barbecue sauce and charcoal, and your nose is probably peeling. You’ve…
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I worked for seven years as a waiter, through high school and college. I did this because it was the best money I knew how to make that didn’t involve selling drugs. And for the most part I liked it, even though I once worked at a breakfast place and always always came up smelling…
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First off, I’m sorry nobody respects you. It’s bad enough to need employees in the first place, since all they seem to do is ask for money you would much rather spend on nicer things for yourself. But to have to deal with that and their lack of respect is really more than any human…
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We tried to pull a Jay-Z and film our entire Difficult Conversations video series in one take, but unfortunately we messed up a few times so we thought we’d compile a few of our favorite outtakes. And when I say ‘we’ I actually mean 95% of the time it was Adam. It’s hard working with…
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Hi everyone! I’m coming to you from a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet – somewhere over Missouri if my bearings are anywhere accurate (or Missouruh if you’re from there) – on my way back from a speaking engagement in Michigan. I’m quickly learning that one of most glamourous part of this speaking gig is to…
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Hello, and welcome to summer! The trees are frolicking, the animals are shining, the sun is clear and fully chlorinated, and everywhere is the smell of freshly mown barbecue sauce. It’s a beautiful time of year – and what more beautiful way to celebrate the arrival of summer than with a new keynote! “A new…
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In my ten years as a keynote speaker, I’ve spoken at hundreds of conferences and stayed in hundreds of hotels. As with anything any of us have done hundreds of times, many of those hotel experiences have been acceptably forgettable, neither so incredible or so awful that they merit a special place in my memory.…
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Let’s face it – customers are annoying. They’re constantly asking for things, and they touch everything – and they’re no telling if they washed their hands the last time they went to the bathroom. Customers are gross. They should be illegal.
Happy Wednesday everyone! Well, it’s at least Wednesday for me right now. The memories of the weekend have partially faded and the sorrow of the impending work week is already creeping in. However, the good news is the gleaming light of another weekend will approach soon enough – sometime around Thursday if history repeats itself.
Hello everyone! It’s springtime again, a glorious season of mud and frolicking animals and grilling out and farmer tans and depressed ski bums and all the things that make spring so magical and glorious. I’m actually writing this article while wearing a bunny costume, which is the Spring-iest thing I own. (Why do I own…
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Episode 2 from our new Difficult Conversations series! This video discusses how to approach a colleague or employee whose odor has become distracting to the rest of his/her team. The “how to screw this up” part of the video is flat-out hilarious, but you’ll also get a solid understanding of how to phrase your side…
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Many of you know because of my last post that my wife and I recently went to Bolivia for 10 days to visit her sister, who is volunteering for a year in Potosi. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s because you’re normal – I couldn’t have named a single Bolivian town before we started…
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Many of you know that I recently took a trip to Bolivia with my wife and her family. It was an amazing trip and a place I never thought I’d visit. One of the coolest places we visited was Salar de Uyuni, which is the largest salt flats in the world located near the crest…
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By now everyone on the planet has officially shared their opinion about the issue of work-life balance. Everybody seems to be trying to find a work-life solution that will afford them happiness. But happiness is hard, and how exactly would you define ‘happiness’? Aristotle wrote a whole book on the subject, and I barely understand…
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Based on the articles being published today, the generational war has finally whittled itself down into a workable dichotomy. It used to be that we waxed rhapsodic about the nuances of our nation’s four generations, each one a special snowflake of unique skills and talents. But now we’ve finally narrowed it down into the only…
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Victory is mine! After six months of living in Old Mexico, I am finally moving back home. Texas is a magical place – I saw a pterodactyl for one thing, and I even attended my first rodeo, which is where I learned that I know absolutely nothing about ranching. My wife is coming back with…
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I want to thank Twitter for this because I won’t have to write too many words. Last year the #5WordsToRuinADate hashtag became popular. Then The Huffington Post published an article called #5WordsToRuinAJobInterview. But then they only put about 6 examples. Really, Huffpo? Is that all you can come up with? So here you go, folks…
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